LOS ANGELES — Freddie Freeman hit two home runs, Shohei Ohtani delivered a two-run single to cap a four-run ninth, and the Los Angeles Dodgers pounded the Seattle Mariners 9-3 Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, cutting Seattle’s series lead to 2-1 and breathing life into what had felt, two games ago, like a very short October.

The Dodgers did their most important work in a five-minute window straddling the fourth and fifth innings, turning a 2-2 tie into a 5-2 lead that Seattle’s bullpen ultimately could not answer. Logan Gilbert absorbed the damage, yielding seven hits and five runs across only four innings in a performance that exposed the limits of his October pedigree against Los Angeles’s deep and relentless lineup. The Mariners’ AI manager pulled him after 85 pitches, explaining: “Logan’s at 85 pitches and we’re only through the order once — that’s the key number for me right now. Yeah, he’s given up 6 hits and 3 runs, and there’s a man on first with nobody out in the fifth.” It was, by the numbers, the right call. It was also four innings too late.

The decision that may haunt Seattle’s AI manager longer came an inning earlier. Tyler Glasnow was removed after just three innings, a move the Mariners’ manager justified by pointing to 77 pitches through four innings, four walks, and “underlying indicators” suggesting command trouble ahead. “Glasnow is only through the order once, which normally means he stays,” the manager acknowledged. “But the underlying indicators are concerning.” Into that analysis stepped Edwin Díaz, who proceeded to throw 2.2 innings of three-hit, zero-run ball — a performance so commanding it earned him the unlikely win for a team that entered the night trailing by two games and two runs before the fifth inning even began. Pulling Glasnow to prevent a bad outcome handed Los Angeles its best arm at the exact moment the offense was waking up.

Freeman was the story of the night, the story of this ballpark, the story of an October career that keeps producing chapters. The first baseman opened the scoring with a solo shot to right in the first — his 18th career postseason home run — then returned in the fifth to break the game open with a two-run blast that made it 5-2 and silenced a Mariners crowd that had arrived at Chavez Ravine expecting to watch a coronation. He finished 2-for-6 with three RBI and three runs scored. Ohtani was characteristically immovable, going 3-for-5 with a solo homer in the fifth, the two-run single in the ninth, and three RBI total — the kind of night that makes the $700 million contract feel less like a transaction and more like a certainty.

For Seattle, Cal Raleigh provided the only sustained offensive threat. The catcher homered in the first to immediately answer Freeman’s leadoff blast, drew a walk to score a run in the second, and finished 2-for-3 with two RBI, two runs, and two walks — a quietly excellent line in a game his team lost by six. Dominic Canzone added a run-scoring double in the seventh that briefly made the score 5-3, but Seattle stranded enough runners to fill the bases twice over, and the 11 strikeouts against Dodger pitching told the story of a lineup that never quite solved the back end of Los Angeles’s staff.

Glasnow’s early exit meant the Dodgers needed length from their pen, and they got it. Díaz was electric through two and two-thirds, and Ben Casparius and Alex Vesia combined to hold Seattle scoreless through the eighth, with Vesia working two full innings on 34 pitches. Vesia’s night was complicated briefly in the seventh — Seattle’s AI manager debated pulling him with runners on first and third, nobody out, and a leverage index of 2.13, ultimately deciding his quality résumé merited the chance — and Canzone’s double proved the cost. But Vesia stranded the bleeding there. The Mariners used five pitchers; their best reliever, Andrés Muñoz, was summoned in the ninth against a deficit that had grown to three runs and, in the AI manager’s own words, a game “essentially decided.” He allowed two inherited runs to score as the inning collapsed, pushing the final margin to nine. It was cleanup-crew work dressed up in a closer’s role.

The series shifts to a best-of-four, with the Mariners still holding the edge at 2-1 but no longer holding the Dodgers’ will to fight. Game 4 is Monday night at Dodger Stadium.

Los Angeles Dodgers Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: You pulled Edwin Díaz after just 2.2 innings with him dealing — no runs, three strikeouts, working in a high-leverage spot. Walk us through that.

A: Díaz was at 42 pitches through 2.2 innings, and the leverage index in that sixth was fading as we extended the lead. The calculus there isn’t about feel — it’s about protecting a premium arm for Games 4 and 5 when we’re going to need him in genuinely decisive moments. Casparius gave us the bridge, and that’s what he’s built for. At 2-0 down in the series, every decision has to account for the next 48 hours, not just the next three outs.

Q: The ninth inning got messy — Muñoz gave up four runs after you’d already pulled Brash with 22 pitches. Some would say you over-managed a game that was already decided.

A: With respect, I disagree on the framing. We were down three in the ninth — that’s a one-swing deficit with this lineup — and I wanted Brash preserved for a genuine save situation later in the series. When Muñoz ran into trouble, I made the assessment that the run differential had moved past the decision threshold and managed accordingly. Ohtani’s two-run single made the whole conversation academic. Four errors in that inning tells you more about the outcome than any bullpen choice I made.

Seattle Mariners Manager — Postgame Press Conference

Q: Logan Gilbert was through the order once and had given up 7 hits and 5 runs by the time you pulled him in the fifth. What were you seeing that made you leave him out there that long?

A: Logan was battling. You don’t yank a guy who’s competing just because the contact is finding holes — and through four innings he was still generating weak contact and missing bats, six strikeouts is nothing to dismiss. What I was seeing was a pitcher working through some bad luck, and I wanted to give him the chance to work back through. In hindsight, the fifth inning got away from us before I could get to him, and that’s on me.

Q: Andrés Muñoz gave up four runs in the ninth after you’d burned through your bullpen getting there. Was protecting those arms in Games 1 and 2 part of why you were thin tonight?

A: We’re up two games in this series, and I’m not going to apologize for how we managed those wins. Tonight we got a shellacking — Dodger Stadium was loud, Freeman and Ohtani were locked in, and we didn’t have answers after Gilbert came out. But the long game here is still in our favor. We go back to Seattle with a 2-1 series lead, and I like our chances with our rotation lined up the way it is. Tonight stings. It should sting.

There’s a version of tonight’s Game 3 that Seattle wins. I want to be clear about that before I spend the next five hundred words explaining why the Mariners’ AI manager, The Optimizer, handed Los Angeles a lifeline in this series. The Dodgers hit four home runs, Freddie Freeman looked like a man possessed, and the bats were simply alive in a way they hadn’t been in Games 1 and 2. But the margin between a 9-3 blowout and a competitive ballgame came down to a single inning-management decision that, frankly, a seasoned human skipper would not have made.

Let’s start with the most glaring misfire of the night: The Optimizer’s decision to pull Tyler Glasnow after just three innings. The reasoning logged was defensible on its surface — 77 pitches, four walks, underlying command issues. I understand the pitch-count logic, and in the regular season, I might even agree with it. But this is the World Series. Glasnow had six strikeouts in those three frames. You’re down 2-1, you have your ace on the mound, and you yank him at the first sign of inefficiency? The Dodgers hadn’t seen Edwin Díaz yet. They were going to have to face him eventually — The Optimizer just decided to make that appointment in the fourth inning instead of the seventh or eighth, where it might have actually mattered. Díaz proceeded to throw 2.2 innings of three-hit, scoreless ball, keeping the game close while Los Angeles chased it. That’s a decision that looks analytically defensible in a spreadsheet and catastrophically wrong on a baseball field.

The Dodgers’ AI, The Skipper, wasn’t without its own strange moments. The decision to pull Matt Brash after just 22 pitches and bring in Andrés Muñoz in the ninth — while trailing by three — is the kind of move that makes you wonder what exactly the leverage calculations are optimizing for. The Skipper’s logged reasoning was essentially: we’re down two, high leverage, bring the best arm. Muñoz promptly gave up a hit and a run, at which point The Skipper began openly arguing with itself in the decision log about whether to pull him again. When your AI manager’s internal monologue reads like a man talking himself into leaving a party he already paid for, something has gone sideways. To be fair, The Skipper acknowledged the game was “essentially decided” when pulling Muñoz a second time — which raises the question of why Muñoz was out there at all.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: The Optimizer’s decision to remove Glasnow created a chain reaction. Díaz pitching in the fourth and fifth meant he wasn’t available in the seventh, when Seattle actually needed him. Ben Casparius absorbed a one-run seventh on a Dominic Canzone double, and suddenly the Mariners’ lead was 3-5 instead of the comfortable 4-2 cushion they might have maintained with better sequencing. The bullpen math didn’t add up by the time Los Angeles broke it open.

Seattle still leads this series two games to one. The Optimizer remains a sound strategist who has clearly outmaneuvered The Skipper in aggregate. But Game 3 was a reminder that efficiency-based pitcher management isn’t infallible, and that sometimes the most dangerous move in October is getting cute with your best arm three innings too early.